Eleven

THERE’S A WAY INTO ANY HOUSE. YOU CAN KNOCK on the door and talk your way in, pleasant-like. You can kick the door down and tromp in with clubs and a gang at your back. Or you can crawl on your sly, silent, dusty belly for sixty feet, scrape some bricks loose, and chew your way in like a rat. Hawker preferred the sneaking route to open and brutal force, which was why he’d become a thief instead of joining the army.

The hole they’d gnawed through the wall came out in an empty hall—Owl was right about that—about six feet up from the floor. You couldn’t take a hold onto the bricks themselves, getting down. That was asking for the whole place to fall apart. You had to jump. Six feet wasn’t what you’d call a long way down, but it was a long way to drop and land soft as cotton, which was what they had to do.

He went first, ignoring some gesticulating from Owl. He didn’t trust either of his cohorts when it came to the fine points of being quiet. He trusted himself. He hit the floorboards loose and springy and turned it into a roll and came down at the end, flat and limp as a doll. He didn’t make any noise.

He was alone in a long corridor with closed doors. No sound of breathing behind any of them doors, which was what you might call an indication they were empty, but not a promise you could take to the bank. Light leaked out of the hole they’d made in the wall. He braced himself on the plaster wall, making a ladder for Owl. Letting her put her feet on his shoulders and climb down, hand and foot, over him. Then Pax did the same thing, only heavier. Nothing like breaking into a house together for getting to know somebody.

Owl dressed right—head to foot in black, boy’s trousers, hair pulled back and braided, covered with a dark scarf, soft boots. She’d left her woman’s clothes in a bundle outside when they first came in. She wouldn’t pass as a boy, not close up, not to a blind man, but she could move fast and easy and nobody cared how she looked anyway.

Pax brought a lit candle with him and left the lantern behind in the attic where it’d be useful in the escape. That was showing a modicum of common sense. Hawker’s old master, who’d taught him to thieve, used to say, “Always take pains over your escape route. It’s never wasted.”

The minute she was down, Owl slipped off to the left, going from door to door, looking in, and leaving everything open behind her. Bedrooms. Men’s clothing. Lots of books and papers. They’d have those rooms to hide in and leap from ambush if they were hunted along this corridor. Pax ghosted off to do the same down the right side, setting his boots to the floor silent as philosophy. All of this with no need for a word between any of them. That was a good sign.

This was a barracks-looking sort of house. No carpet in the hall. No furniture. No place for a cat to sit. Ten or twenty framed samplers on the wall. Not like anybody lived here at all. Not like it was somebody’s home.

The door to the attic turned out to be next-to-last on the right-hand side. He went straight to it, which was half figuring out where it must be from long experience in the way houses were laid out and half luck. He hoped he impressed everybody.

Owl had worked her way to the head of the stairs leading down. She stood, breathing slow, getting herself steeled up for what came next. When she’d done that a minute, she took a little gun out of the pouch under her shirt.

He trotted down the hall—quiet about it—to intercept her. She looked mulish, but she stopped.

He held out his hand and she gave him the gun so he could take a look at it. It was small, but not a toy. A serious gun, well maintained. A working weapon.

When he gave it back, she held it right—low against her side, on the half cock, thumb on the hammer. She’d been well taught. She might last all of a minute and a half in a real fight.

He mouthed, “Good luck,” and hoped like hell she wouldn’t need it.

Then he headed for the attic to play his part. He passed Pax, still searching rooms. Taking the stairs upward was like climbing into a dark throat. What they had here was—what would Doyle have called it?—Stygian darkness, whatever the hell that meant. Funny how his old profession—stealing—and his new one—spying—both involved a lot of fumbling his way around in the dark.

The fourth tread squeaked, like he’d stepped on something that objected. He’d been hugging along next to the wall just so that wouldn’t happen. It was a shame and pity the way some householders didn’t fix these little defects in their house.

At the top of the stairs, he ran his hands up and down the doorframe. The door was not just locked, but barred, like they were keeping jaguars and highwaymen behind it. A board thick as his hand was laid across the door in iron holders. Serious impediments to exit on this door. They were keeping somebody in, not out.

He put his ear to the wood and there was not a sound inside, which would ordinarily mean he was about to break into some furniture storage. In this case, it probably indicated somebody was going to stab him the minute he nudged the door open.

He’d had the chance, once, to apprentice to a fence, him being handy with numbers and knowing a fair amount about stolen goods. He should probably have pursued that line of work.

He lifted the bar up. Set it to the side, out of the way. Next on his list was this padlock. Nice and solid. Cold. Heavy. Expensive work, by the feel of it. His picks slipped into his hand with velvet silence since he kept them wrapped up nice and quiet. There was no feeling in the world sweeter than a fine pair of lockpicks between the fingers.

Except maybe a girl’s breasts. Maybe the flower between her legs. That was the sweetest toy in the world. But lockpicks were a close second.

He shouldn’t be thinking about girls when he was on a job. Doyle would have said something sarcastic and made him feel like a fool.

He saw Pax before he heard him, since Pax was bringing the candle and he made about as much noise as the ghost of a mouse. Pax didn’t creak on that fourth step. Then he stood, not flapping his mouth, holding the light at a useful angle.

Hawker’d admit it—Pax knew what he was doing. Didn’t make him one wad of spit more likable.

The tumblers scraped. The lock clicked free. Pax cupped his palm around the candle flame so it wouldn’t blow out if they encountered any breeze in the course of their next activities.

The door swung out smoothly, showing a tight, narrow room with no lights inside.

A pack of kids stood together at the far side of the room. They were dressed in short, white nightshirts—the same for girls and boys. Counting quick, he summed it up as thirteen of them. The girl with blond braids, the one he’d seen fighting yesterday, was in front. On her right, a boy the same size. Pink and blond for the girl. Really beautiful. Brown and wholesome-looking for the boy.

Still as doorsteps, every one of them.

So far, so good. “We’re friends,” he whispered. “Give me a minute to talk . . .” before you start yelling.

This wasn’t much of a room for a baker’s dozen of kids to sleep in. Slanted ceiling. The only place you could stand up was in the middle. The little window at the end had no reflection in it. No glass. Just a hole in the wall with iron bars across it. Too small to crawl out of even if you were a skinny kid.

No beds. No furniture. No dressers. Blankets were parceled out in two rows, one on each side of the attic, on the floor. That was how they slept. One blanket under them. One over. No pillow. No padding. No sheet. Clothes stacked in a neat pile next each blanket, a pair of shoes set square beside it.

It was hotter in here than outside. He knew all about attic rooms like this. Roast in summer. Freeze in winter.

The bedrooms he’d seen downstairs were comfortable enough.

The kids’ faces and bodies were honed down into hungry angles. Not a plump one in the lot. And they were locked in. He felt Pax behind him, being silent.

The blond girl said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

She was the leader then. It showed in the way the others kept an eye on her and ranged themselves out from a center, where she was. Street thieves in the St. Giles rookeries traveled in mean, dangerous little packs that acted like this. They were run by girls, often as not.

He said, “I want to get you out of here.”

“Why?” One blunt word from the boy at the front.

“Does it matter?”

None of them blinked. Absorbed attention was the order of the day.

He said, “Have they told you Robespierre is dead?”

“We were told.”

“Then you know everything’s changed. This Coach House of yours . . .” He didn’t spit on the floor. Doyle said gentlemen didn’t spit. That left him not knowing how to express his feelings with the eloquence they deserved. “This place. It’s done. Finished. Over. You’re the last.” He took a step into the room. He saw the girl think about attacking him and decide to put that off for the moment.

He said, “This is what they didn’t tell you. There’s no place for you in England. Nothing’s prepared. There’s no one left to set you up. You won’t be put in families or schools. You’ll go to brothels.”

The girl remained cold-eyed. “Why do you concern yourself?”

Damned if he knew. But Doyle would do this. Maybe this was what a gentleman would do. “Stay, or get yourselves out of this kennel. You have three minutes to decide.”

“They’re testing us,” a boy said. Another nodded.

“It is the British.”

“They will cut our throats,” a girl said in a sweet voice.